


Summer King

by greenapples



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-12-13 07:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapples/pseuds/greenapples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She lights the candles because Merlin told her to. She holds no great hope because her mind knows not to. She still desperately wants this because her heart needs to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer King

‘Light the candles, Gwen’, he’d said. And so she did.

 

When the dark of night came, on the shortest night of the year -she’d had Geoffrey and Gaius and two of the druids that moved into the village recently make sure the date was right- Queen Guinevere locked her chamber door, retrieved the basket Merlin had given her that last time they met, folded the covering cloth over one side and stared. There were three fat candles, dark wicks and small dried drips of wax on their sides told her they’d been used before. 

 

She set out to do as instructed.

 

One by the East window, lit first and with her wedding ring sitting beside it. It smelled of spring, all fresh flowers and new grass. It made her smile with the memory of long-gone days next to her husband and their friend. But mostly her husband.

 

Fighting a blush she was too old -and lonely- to be allowing, Gwen lit the second, right at the opposite side of the room from the first one, upon a stool she had to bring against the wall to serve her -Merlin’s really- purpose, Arthur’s ring next to it. It had to be lit with a flame carried over from the first one and when the wick caught, Gwen felt her knees weaken for a moment, the same slight wobbling she got that first time Arthur spoke of a future for them, hiding behind a column in a hallway in the palace.

 

The third had to be placed beside her bed, lit from a fresh spark and sitting upon the last hair ribbon she’d given Arthur for good luck on a joust.

 

‘Arthur’, she whispered, once they were all lit and she was primly sat at the edge of the bed, her heart beating double time and her stomach preemptively dropping so that her disappointment wouldn’t hurt quite as much. ‘Arthur’.

 

Then she waited.

 

And waited.

 

And is still waiting when warm droplet falls on her finger where she clasps her hands tightly together upon her thighs, and this is how she realizes she’s crying, her back aches and her chest feels tight, her body too small to contain all this new grief. 

Nothing will happen. 

She knew it wouldn’t, no magic could ever be that strong, but Merlin’s promise still had been a sterling light on the horizon of her last year, the wait for this night had felt interminable, the pitying and worried looks of her closest friends a burning on her shoulders that she was able to shake off because nothing would happen even though Merlin had promised.

 

‘He promised’ comes out of her mouth before she can swallow it down.

 

‘And he delivered’, says a voice behind her. A voice warn and thick with disuse. 

 

A voice she’d been desperately hoping to hear again before her end.

 

‘Arthur’, her heart has no room inside its cage of ribs to beat as fast as it would like, she’s breathing so hard she fears fainting. Her whole body has gone taut as a string and simply refuses to move and turn around, for she might find that only emptiness accompanies her and her mind has conjured up a deeply desired response. 

 

She might find the man she loved the most standing there, arms open and eyes tracking her every move. 

 

She finds both options equally unbearable an it frightens her.

 

‘Guinevere’.

 

The hand on her shoulder is warm and heavy, though strangely untouchable. There but not there. Her breathing slows a fraction, her body slumps gently. Her spine tingles. Her fingertips itch.

 

‘Is it really you?’ she asks, voice cracking shamelessly as tears burn in the back of her throat. ‘Am I going mad?’

 

A weight settles next to her on the bed, he looks oddly out of place, as though this was the first time he’d ever been on this bed in this room with his hand sliding down her back and his lips seeking her cheek.

 

Gwen turns to him now, reaching her hand out to trace the strong line of his jaw, the soft swell of his lips, the sharpness of his cheekbone, the silkiness of his messy hair. He is here. She can feel him even if not touch him. He is here, with her, again.

 

‘He said you’d come’.

 

Arthur nods and smiles and suddenly she has to stop herself from bodily jumping on him and holding him against her so he never leaves again.

 

Gwen has the silly vision of herself walking around with a not-really-there-and-possibly-shimmering-Arthur through the hallways, having to have a new throne made big enough to fit them both, having to go about her daily tasks clenching her hand around his. It would certainly make a number of things unnecessarily uncomfortable.

 

It makes her laugh a crazy, wild laughter.

 

Arthur laughs with her. And then they’re both tumbling down onto the floor, a mess of skirts and boots and her braid has become undone -no, Arthur has undone it- and all she can see is his face, his eyes brighter than she remembers them, that smile that still sends butterflies into flight inside her belly.

 

‘Did you miss me?’

 

For a second it’s their old game, their old selves, together and inseparable and happy. Alive and bursting with hope. For a second Gwen’s tears spill until she reins herself in and reaches out for his hand.

 

‘Every moment I could spare, I gave to you’, she answers. 

 

It’s the most honest she can be, for she did miss him, of course she did, but something tells her that confessing to having found alternate paths around the hole he left in her soul would be in really poor taste. And it’s absolutely true besides, she has given him every moment she was not using up ruling Camelot, or being with her friends, or eating, or sleeping. She has given him all those trips down the hall from one room to another, all those nights before falling asleep, and then many of her dreams, every second spent on horseback, and staring out of windows. 

 

He’s been gone, but he still lingers, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

He wraps his arm around her shoulders and brings her against his chest -where there is no heartbeat- and gooseflesh pops up all over her, he’s not cold, not exactly, but it’s not the warmth she remembers.

 

A new gaping hole opens up and threatens to swallow her whole now that she’s, once again, faced with his absence, his impossible return.

 

‘I’m sorry, Guinevere. I’m so sorry. I meant to come back. I wanted to. I miss you most of all. All the time’

 

‘You do?’, she asks, because for better or worse he is here now, as much as he can be. And she’s not one to waste. 

 

‘Well, I guess it’s all the time. I’m not really sure how this works. Are you cold? You’re shivering’.

 

And she is, without realizing it and for reasons she’s not brave enough to dwell into at the moment. Arthur holds her tighter against him. She can feel the calluses of his hand where they press against her skin.

 

The shiver that runs through her is of another nature entirely.

 

‘I’m fine. Just hold me’.

So he does. His lips trace the shell of her ear as he whispers to her things about the place where he is, about how Merlin sent him there and told him he’d be safe until his time came and Albion needed him again, though Arthur cannot fathom what could his kingdom ever need from him now that Gwen is in charge of things. 

He tells her how proud he is of all the things she’s changed and improved in his absence, of how beautiful she looks with her crown and how marrying her was probably the smartest decision he’d ever made. She informs him that there is one ‘probably’ too many in his sentence and he laughs his full belly laugh, it shakes her alongside him, it makes her want to turn around and straddle him and tickle him until he begs her to stop and then keep on touching him until he begs her to keep going.

 

‘This is harder than I expected’, she says after they’ve calmed down. ‘Not that I expected anything, of course.’

 

‘Of course’.

 

The glint in his eye sees straight through her.

 

‘It’s hard for me too’, he says. And then, because he’s Arthur and he is entirely hopeless when it comes to certain things, ‘well, the problem is that nothing’s really all that hard.’

 

Gwen rolls her eyes and feigns scandal -Arthur!- before he can add the if you know what I mean that she can hear lurking under his tongue.

 

He laughs again.

 

‘Sun will rise soon’, Arthur whispers into her ear after a while. They’d been snuggling and commenting on all the palace gossip she has access to now that she’s the sole ruler and everyone has to come tell things to her. 

 

Gwen sits up suddenly. The traitorous clearing on the window agrees with his statement and her heart sinks to the very bottom of her stomach. For a moment she fears she might be sick. It’s too soon. Not enough time. They didn’t have enough time, not this night and not all the days and nights before.

 

They didn’t have enough time.

 

The burning knot of tears and sobs crowd her throat again, her vision blurs and Arthur’s desperate lips taste like salt. They kiss. They embrace. Arthur lets his hand fall on her backside. She clutches at his shoulders, his nape, too busy trying to engrave every touch of his into her memory to even think about groping him in return.

 

When they part because she still has to breathe, his pupils are dilated and she can feel that little nub between her legs throbbing gently. Gwen curses rather colorfully inside her head because there is not enough time. Or enough of them, as Arthur so eloquently put it. And she misses him and maybe having him for a little bit more was just too much even if it would never, ever be enough.

 

‘Careful with Leon’, he warns, looking to the window and back at her face. The flame of the candle beside her bed seems to go off with the gust of her half-hearted laugh.

 

‘I love you. I love you. I love you’, they say. Indiscriminately, talking over each other and into each other, into their ears, their palms, their lips. I love you I love you I love you I love you.

 

After the sun’s risen and her chambers are swimming in golden light, after the knocking on her door has subsided, after she’s stopped hiccuping and her tears have stopped falling, Gwen picks herself up, gathers the candles -barely consumed, even though they burned through the entire night- and puts them back in their basket, hides it all in her closet and goes to open the window.

 

Arthur’s scent has seeped into the bedding where he leaned on and her dress, and she is glad but she is also very busy today. And will be very busy all the days to come until the next shortest night of the year.

**Author's Note:**

> So. Started to write this with the full intention of providing longjackets(.tumblr.com) with the fluff!fest a person of her standing deserves. Wound up giving myself a sad. Thus the aggressive determination to give it a happy ending of sorts. All this is to blame for the potential questionable genre.


End file.
